Orbs In Paranormal Contexts

I've written about parallels between UFOs and other paranormal phenomena, like poltergeists and mediumship. See, for example, here and here. I want to note another parallel, which I haven't investigated much. But the subject should get more discussion than it does and should be researched further.

In his recent book on UFOs, Lue Elizondo wrote about some experiences he and others around him had with orbs:

I never had any interaction with orbs until I started working with the program [a Pentagon investigation of UFOs].

I was shocked to find that a lot of my colleagues and I began experiencing firsthand some of these orbs at our homes. In fact, my wife was a complete skeptic on all this—that is, until she saw an orb in our house for herself.

We had a long main hallway in the house, and one evening a green, glowing ball, probably about the size of a basketball, with soft edges that weren’t defined, floated down slowly from the kitchen to our bedroom door just below ceiling height, then disappeared into a wall. Hoping Jenn caught a glimpse of it, I turned to her, catching the perplexed look on her face. She indeed saw it the entire ten seconds it was in our house.

Another time, the kids reported seeing an orb appear in the air, hover near them for a few seconds, and then float away. They described what they’d seen as best they could, first to my wife, and again to me when I asked. Their description made my blood run cold. The object had been three-dimensional but still translucent and suffused with an eerie green light. The object behaved as if guided by some intelligence. It parked itself in the air, then drifted off down the hall before disappearing entirely.

What the hell was going on?

Were these things probes sent to scope out my house? Was this some sort of adversarial technology being used to conduct surveillance against my family and me? Or worse, was this all part of the UAP [unidentified anomalous phenomena] issue? Maybe another, more advanced intelligence was looking into me and my colleagues because they knew we were looking into them? Or did it all presage something more sinister?

After the pilot Kenneth Arnold’s famous 1947 UAP sighting, which was a couple of weeks before the Roswell crashes, he and his family allegedly had balls of light in their home....

Over time, more orbs appeared in our home. Not too frequently: a whole month might go by, and then one would arrive. Since “our” orbs manifested as clear or green, I did not feel compelled to warn my family to avoid them. I didn’t want to frighten them further. As far as I knew, only blue was problematic.

Nevertheless, we couldn’t shake the things. I’d be sitting at the dining room table, working at my computer or catching up on some reading, and I’d suddenly notice one of these damn balls hovering nearby. Other times, we’d be outside, grilling or hanging out near our koi pond with neighbors, when an orb would appear randomly, linger for a few moments, then mosey over toward the trees on the edges of our property. Our neighbors witnessed this too. It got to the point where neighbors would sometimes joke, “Is this one of our government’s secret programs you are working on, Lue?” Laughing uncomfortably, I’d think to myself, You have no idea how close to the truth you are.

Like the rest of the family, I had tried to ignore the visitations, hoping that they would stop. But they didn’t. During times of high atmospheric energy, such as storms, the occurrences became more pronounced. There are people who would conclude this was somehow connected to lightning, but it wasn’t. Nor were there any high-voltage power lines anywhere in the vicinity.

(Imminent [New York, New York: William Morrow, 2024], approximate Kindle locations 1321, 1351)

Elizondo is a credible witness, and I doubt he'd mention so many other people (coworkers, relatives, neighbors) who saw the same phenomena or type of phenomenon if he was making these things up. He'd be unlikely to open himself up so unnecessarily to so much potential falsification if he were being dishonest.

After reading Elizondo's book, I was reminded of something I'd forgotten about in another book. I was looking something up regarding the Enfield Poltergeist in Stewart Lamont's Is Anybody There? (Great Britain: Mainstream Publishing, 1980). I noticed that, on page 24, there's a brief reference to "a green circular floating light seen by Daily Mirror photographer". At least two Daily Mirror photographers worked the Enfield case, so I wrote to Lamont to find out who he was referring to. He told me he was referring to Graham Morris, but Lamont didn't recall much about the incident. I haven't been successful in my efforts to get more information from Morris.

John Burcombe, one of the foremost witnesses in the Enfield case, described his worst experience during the case as involving a light he saw on the staircase at the Hodgsons' house. Go here and scroll down to the section titled "John Burcombe's Worst Experience" to read more about it. What he describes seems to be an orb, but there's a significant amount of ambiguity.

I've occasionally seen references to orbs of some type in paranormal cases other than the ones discussed above. Alan Gauld and A.D. Cornell referred to haunting cases that involve "the appearance of luminosities and balls of light" (Poltergeists [United States: White Crow Books, 2017], approximate Kindle location 3156). See the Psi Encyclopedia's article here for an overview of orbs in paranormal contexts.

As an illustration of the significance of the parallels involved, think of Elizondo's experiences and the Enfield incident involving Graham Morris. The orbs are the same color, and they're appearing in the same kind of setting, hovering above the ground in a home with current occupants. It would be good to get more information about the Enfield episode (and to what extent there were other such events during the case), to see if there are further parallels with what Elizondo experienced. This kind of event is more expected in a poltergeist case. What stands out more is seeing the same type of event in a UFO-related context. UFOs are associated with larger objects and the outdoors. So, seeing a smaller object appearing indoors is less in character in a UFO setting.

However, there's some significance even in the vaguer parallels among paranormal events involving orbs. All of these incidents, including the ones Gauld and Cornell referred to with less detail, involve orbs consisting of some kind of light and that are seen and whose purpose is unknown (unlike, say, a spherical part of a machine, whose purpose is known). The "seen" qualifier is important. If these orbs were some type of surveillance device, a possibility Elizondo brought up, you'd have to ask why they so often allow themselves to be seen so easily, especially if the beings behind them are as advanced as is often suggested. They seem to hover off the ground the large majority of the time. And my impression is that they're certain colors much more often than others. I don't recall ever hearing of a pink orb in any paranormal context, for example. My main point here, though, is that a common thread among so many paranormal events isn't just the involvement of orbs, but even a particular type of orb (with the characteristics I just outlined). Sometimes the characteristics are more parallel than on other occasions, such as the parallels between Elizondo's experiences and the Enfield incident involving Morris, but even the episodes that are less parallel are significantly similar.